On A Sullen Ground: Year One
by DagonSt
Summary: Harry Potter sorts into Slytherin, in a series of discontinuous snippets that barely touch on the actual plot of the book. Written post-OotP and pre-HBP.
1. The SnakePit

First, there is Draco Malfoy. Draco is sometimes the leader and sometimes the clown, but either way it's because he needs the attention. He would rather people looked at him than at Harry, so it's easiest to stand next to him and stay quiet.

Draco does not start fights with anyone but Harry. He throws insults until they try to hit him, and then he uses Vincent Crabbe and Greg Goyle. They're very stupid, and like to hit people, and they've been with Draco forever. The three move as a unit, and Harry disrupts the pace whenever he walks with them.

Pansy Parkinson might be smarter than she looks. Harry thought at first that she and Draco had been betrothed since infancy, like in a fairy tale. Now he thinks they aren't, but she wants them to be. She's around enough to make it obvious, but not enough to annoy anyone too much.

There are other girls, and older students; except for the Quidditch team, all are beneath notice.

Professor Snape is the Head of House, and hates him. Harry yelled that he didn't want to be famous because his parents were dead, and Snape took points from Slytherin. Apparently he had never done that before. Draco shoves him and calls him an idiot, and has Crabbe and Goyle follow him around for a week so he doesn't get hurt too badly. Draco says that Snape thinks Harry is a bad influence. Harry thinks Snape might be a Dark wizard.

Slytherin has some classes with Gryffindor, and this is the most Harry sees of the other Houses. Hermoine Granger is smartest, and everyone pays her about as much attention as she pays them. Longbottom makes poor sport for Draco despite his shaky magic and funny last name, because he won't fight back. Harry sometimes stands up for him in Potions, because it really pisses Snape off to deduct points from Slytherin for defending Gryffindor.

Ron Weasley is the target of choice. There are four Weasley boys at Hogwarts, all with red hair and freckles, but when Draco says Weasel, he only means Ron. Ron gets mad, and very red, and fights back even when he shouldn't. Harry stays out of that. But he doesn't try to keep Draco from it, or say anything to him in front of people. They're both Slytherin, and Weasley has his own family.


	2. Sorting Out

Minerva McGonagall did not encourage visitors at this time of the year. It was, in fact, traditional for the staff to give the Heads of House a wide berth while they dealt with the difficulties their students inevitably brought back from the summer recess. So, while she left her office door open as a common courtesy, she expected everyone else to have the common decency not to enter.

Severus Snape, who ought to have known better, threw a scroll down onto Minerva's already burdened desk with what Minerva considered an overly dramatic gesture. Albus must have decided to let things sort themselves out, then, and Severus... was not a patient man. She sniffed, then pushed her glasses up her nose to peer at the Potions Master.

"It's Potter." Of course it was. "I want him out of my House."

"Re-sorted? Severus, I do think that's a little extreme." Minerva felt a queer sense of triumph: he had said it first, and she got to be the sensible one.

"It is not unprecedented for the Sorting Hat to be wrong. There were two cases -"

"One of those was a possession, Severus." The relevant citations in Hogwarts: A History (Unabridged) came to four sentences in all - not much of a precedent.

"You looked it up too."

"Well," Minerva gestured vaguely. "Simple curiosity."

"As you like. Harry Potter should not remain in Slytherin."

"Shut the door, Severus. Thank you. Certainly, the Sorting Hat's choice was unexpected -" One could only hope the boy had not noticed the second of utter silence before Slytherin began applauding. "But perhaps it had its reasons."

Snape gestured at the scroll. "He knows nothing about wizardry at all. Raised by Muggles, that says. And the rest of his year - the rest of Slytherin -"

"Are pureblooded?" Minerva inserted crisply.

Snape grimaced, but tried to recover his argument. "Were raised as wizards. I hope we can agree that it makes a difference."

"For the first few months, perhaps. Nearly all of them adjust. That simply isn't good enough." It was a remarkably silly argument, as any teacher with Severus's experience ought to know.

"In Slytherin, Minerva. Where nearly all the students have been learning magic for years; where most of them _are_ pure-bloods, and not all of those raised in awe of the 'Boy Who Lived'."

Severus had, in the last week, made his opinions of Harry Potter's fame quite well-known. The students were not the only reason one might wish Harry had been placed elsewhere. "I know. Severus, I watched those - those people - we left Harry with. You've read his scroll. But the only thing to be done - then and now, Severus - is simply to hope Albus is right again, and it's for the best."

"Just the spirit of resignation that helped the Dark Lord to become a problem in the first place," Severus sneered.

"It cannot have escaped you that Albus is the Headmaster, and I am merely the Head of Gryffindor. I trust him." She met Snape's glare evenly, with a smile that would irritate him more than anything merely unpleasant. "And I do not believe that Harry Potter will lack for protectors, even in Slytherin."

True to form, the man swept out with a disgusted air - whether to his dungeons or Albus's office, Minerva couldn't say. She spelled the door locked after him.


	3. Christmas

**1. Friends**

Draco announced that the only students staying at Hogwarts were the ones whose parents didn't want them, so Harry has detention today. He gets tired of the way Draco forgets that not everyone is like him. Harry's parents are dead. No-one else has trouble remembering that.

It's a sore point for Harry, people wanting him around, and that's really why he hit Draco in front of Weasley and Snape and everyone. He wouldn't have gotten half the detention if he'd punched Weasley instead. He scrubs cauldrons. It's small consolation that Snape doesnt have anything else to do on Christmas either.

**2. Presents**

Draco's is just the size for sweaters and holds one when Harry opens it under Snape's scrutiny. But sitting alone on his bed, he finds a pair of Firebolts, wedged in with a spell that makes his eyes hurt. Harry grins and stows them away under Draco's bed.

When he turns back, there's another box on the bed. Harry's is the only name on it. It's wrapped in purple, red, yellow, and blue, which clears Snape altogether. More clothes - a cloak that Harry disappears in. Really disappears, he realizes. The invisibility feels even stranger than the fabric, but Harry adjusts.

**3. Family**

The Dursleys sent fifty pence taped to a card that doesn't say Happy Holidays!, but it gets lost in the excitement of being invisible and trying to make Hagrid's flute sound more like Hedwig.

Next morning, he finds it in his pocket. He flips it into the air at breakfast, catches it again and again. It's something to do. "What's that, Potter," calls out a Weasley from across the room, where the four of them sit together. "A practice Snitch?"

He looks at the coin in his palm, worn and discolored and a little bent. "No. It's an insult."


	4. Spectacles

The worst detentions are when he goes to Snape about his glasses. He's broken them three times this year: dropping them off a staircase, falling off his broom, and once leaving them out on the table where Crabbe always dropped his books.

The first time, he scrubbed cauldrons for an hour before Snape said, "_oculis reparo_," and gave his glasses back. Even when Snape wasn't watching - which was not often enough - he felt much too open and obvious. He tried not to look up at all.

If Snape knew that the glasses meant anything more than homework and not tripping over his own feet, he wouldn't fix them right. Harry needs his glasses, and not just to see. They're a shield: they keep Harry on one side and everyone else - the ones who mean well and the ones who don't - out there. All the lines are blurrier without them.

The second time, Snape didn't fix them. Harry was convinced his broom had been tampered with, so he did it himself. The cracks disappeared with a snapping sound, and Harry felt brilliant. Until he put them on and realized he'd repaired them right into flat panes of glass.

"Oh, _hell_," he'd said, and Draco started laughing at him. "No wonder you haven't tried fixing your eyes, Potter, they'd pop right out of your head!" It wasn't very funny, but Harry joined in because it was a relief to be on the ground, and his glasses the only thing broken.

He took them to Snape again, who gave him a concave hand mirror to practice on in his detention, but had to send his glasses off anyway. Snape didn't know his prescription, and couldn't make the lenses curve again. Everyone seemed to be watching him, that week.

The third time, Harry got another hour's practice breaking the mirror that never repaired itself in the same way twice and kept reflecting things that weren't in front of it. Once, there were eyes that glowed. Harry dropped the mirror and cast again.

Long after he's started mending his own glasses, he will learn about mercury. "Used in all wizarding and many Muggle mirrors," MacGonagall lectures, "Quicksilver interferes with transfiguration spells, particularly _reparo._ Broken mirrors should be discarded immediately."


	5. Custody

"And a letter signed by your guardian."

Harry's world crashed down - he knew how impossible that was, and how unfair, and clearly Snape did too. The man was practically smiling. "But - I haven't spoken to them all year! They're Muggles; they don't even take owls!"

"That is the rule, Potter, and it is one you _will_ follow." Harry usually had good reasons for breaking rules. Snape even knew about some of them, at least. Maybe he wasn't a dark wizard, but he'd given Harry more than enough reason to hate him.

"It's not as though they even want to see me!"

"And no doubt Lucius Malfoy has more important business than minding an insolent brat all summer." If the professor's expression darkened, Harry didn't catch it. Draco was worse than him, but Snape never noticed that.

"He said I could come!"

"Nevertheless, Potter, you will not be going."

"Isn't that for Aunt Petunia to decide?" Harry muttered, before recalling his coaching. He took a breath, and went on, desperation bringing forth candor. "Professor Snape, all they're going to do is lock me in a cupboard for three months - why _shouldn't_ I go with Draco?"

"Because I have seen nothing in your attitude or conduct to suggest that you deserve it. Two hours' detention for your insubordination, Potter. Get out."

Harry slammed the door after him.


End file.
